New Chips Enable 2.4 GHz Sensor Networks

mindless4210 writes "Oki announced today that the world's first fully compliant IEEE 802.15.4 and ZigBee chip has been developed. The technology promises to start a new generation of wireless sensor networks, utilizing the unlicensed 2.4 GHz spectrum. The new IC integrates the digital circuit-based MAC and PHY with the analog circuit-based RF onto a single chip. The company also developed a kit which enables fast production of sensor networks which could control air conditioning, lighting, fire alarm systems, and many other applications. The low power consumption of the chip enables multi-year operation with only dry-cell batteries."

Comments

Re:Great...

[jhouserizer]

Yeah... until recently, my only option for "broadband" internet access was via a local provider how used 2.4GHz equipment.

What a nightmare that was. That crap only worked about 50% of the time... until my neighbor used their cordless phone, or my microwave ran, etc. etc. The ISP was continually tracking down sources of interferance, and installing new filters, amplifiers, etc.

I've now moved to a provider that uses (motorolla) equipment that runs in the 5GHz range. This stuff seems to work flawlessly.

Re:This is news for nerds?

[jamonterrell]

Why can't we just have story moderation? Editors would simply approve/disprove stories for voting, obvious crap would get dumped, anything mildly interesting would get posted to the moderation page. logged in users would then have the opportunity to look through all the stories submitted (minus the total crap) if they wanted. People who only want to see the best would simply choose to only view the top X% of stories of the last X# of hours. It's not really that different than moderation and it'd be easy to implement.
I'd imagine some editors might not like it because it would reduce their ego, but it would make for a much better slashdot.